LONDON — Actress Prunella Scales, best known for playing the sarcastic Sybil Fawlty on the classic British sitcom “Fawlty Towers,” has died, her children said Tuesday. She was 93 years old and had dementia.
Scales' sons, Samuel and Joseph West, said she died “peacefully at home in London” on Monday.
“Although dementia forced her to give up a remarkable acting career that lasted nearly 70 years, she continued to live at home,” her sons said. “She was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died.”
Scales' career included early film roles in the 1952 version of Pride and Prejudice and the 1954 comedy Hobson's Choice, followed by her television breakthrough in the 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines.
In Fawlty Towers, she played the disgruntled wife of John Cleese's hapless Basil Fawlty, whose efforts to run a seaside hotel inevitably descend into chaos. Only 12 episodes were produced in 1975 and 1979, but it is regularly cited as one of the funniest sitcoms of all time.
Later roles included Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution, Alan Bennett's stage and television drama about the Queen's arts adviser Anthony Blunt, who was also a Soviet spy. Scales played another British monarch in the one-woman show An Evening with Queen Victoria.
In 2013, Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia. Between 2014 and 2019, she and her husband, actor Timothy West, explored waterways in the UK and abroad in gentle travel show Great Canal Journeys. The program was praised for its honest portrayal of Scales' dementia.
West died in November 2024. Scales is survived by her sons, stepdaughter Juliet West, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
